Canonical has an incredibly convoluted, daunting hiring process. What’s seen in the screenshot can’t even realistically be considered the tip of the iceberg.
Besides fussing over your high school performance (if you don’t claim to be top X% of your class it’s an instant rejection), they also make you do written quizzes and some “psychometric assessment” (pseudo-science BS). After that it’ll be roughly TEN rounds of interviews, the final one being with Mark Shuttleworth himself who may very well be a dick and decide he simply doesn’t like you.
I once considered applying to them since they have a lot of interesting job postings on LinkedIn, but after reading through these experiences I decided this simply wasn’t worth it.
After that it’ll be roughly TEN rounds of interviews, the final one being with Mark Shuttleworth himself who may very well be a dick and decide he simply doesn’t like you.
A dear friend of mine went through this hiring process for a very senior spot. She’s been out of high-school for 35 years, has obtained 2 degrees since, and has run a hemisphere for a very nerdy storage-adjacent pro-serve company for a decade; but still needed to talk about her English marks in secondary school. I met her when we started our own company in '97.
She suffered 14 interviews, with the prep, interview - panel, group, or solo - taking a lot of her daytime. It was grueling. She met Mark, and it went very well. Her new boss and reports were making all kinds of positive noises about starting work soon.
A sub-stellar response from some French guy from Interview #3 torpedoed it. The rejection after all the essays, questions, prepared interviews and research was absolutely crushing and almost derailed the MBA programme she was on.
Canonical has an incredibly convoluted, daunting hiring process. What’s seen in the screenshot can’t even realistically be considered the tip of the iceberg. Besides fussing over your high school performance (if you don’t claim to be top X% of your class it’s an instant rejection), they also make you do written quizzes and some “psychometric assessment” (pseudo-science BS). After that it’ll be roughly TEN rounds of interviews, the final one being with Mark Shuttleworth himself who may very well be a dick and decide he simply doesn’t like you.
If you’re curious, someone has written down their full experience here: https://www.dustri.org/b/my-experience-with-canonicals-interview-process.html
I once considered applying to them since they have a lot of interesting job postings on LinkedIn, but after reading through these experiences I decided this simply wasn’t worth it.
A dear friend of mine went through this hiring process for a very senior spot. She’s been out of high-school for 35 years, has obtained 2 degrees since, and has run a hemisphere for a very nerdy storage-adjacent pro-serve company for a decade; but still needed to talk about her English marks in secondary school. I met her when we started our own company in '97.
She suffered 14 interviews, with the prep, interview - panel, group, or solo - taking a lot of her daytime. It was grueling. She met Mark, and it went very well. Her new boss and reports were making all kinds of positive noises about starting work soon.
A sub-stellar response from some French guy from Interview #3 torpedoed it. The rejection after all the essays, questions, prepared interviews and research was absolutely crushing and almost derailed the MBA programme she was on.
That was a really interesting rabbit hole. Thank you.